


Healing Over

by feeding_geese



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feeding_geese/pseuds/feeding_geese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Mockingjay, Katniss learns a thing or about scars, healing, and the durability of markers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Healing Over

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I run my hand over a freshly stretched canvas. He’s been making his own lately, eliminating the time he has to wait for new ones to roll in from the Capitol. “You’ve already got your paints out.”  
“And I can put them back just as easily. That’s not the point. I want to know if you’re absolutely, 100 percent sure you want to do this.” I give it a good think. It’s really not a big deal. It isn’t like they’ll be hanging in a Capitol gallery. It’s just for us.  
“Absolutely,” I nod. “100 percent.”  
“Okay,” he smiles, cracking his knuckles. “Take it off.”  
My clothes come off with little fanfare and I take in the shift in his demeanor when he’s looking at me as a subject and not a woman. When I’m standing in the middle of the study without a stitch on, he begins to circle me, moving my limbs back and forth, playing with the shadows and light that filters through the gauzy curtains I made him pull in case someone happens by. It’s a good while until he gets me at an angle he likes. Then he sits down and begins mixing colors, squinting at parts of me and adding more red, more yellow. When he’s happy with the palette, he pulls the first canvas onto the easel. Then he begins to paint my scars.  
He first started thinking about them weeks ago. We were still getting used to each other’s bodies, and we spent a long morning going over our injuries. Some we knew the origins of, some we didn’t. Some we wouldn’t ask. The big one across my stomach reaches all the way to my back, and he rolled me across the bed to take it all in.  
“This one’s kind of pretty, actually.” I turned my head and stared. There was really no reason for flattery. They were horrible, ugly scars and we both knew it. “No, really,” he insisted, blocking of a section on my hip with his hands. “It looks like someone spilled paint on you. And if you look at it in little parts, you can see patterns or even pictures.” I rolled over on my back.   
“All I see are red, angry scars.”   
“Then look harder. I’ve got a fish on my thigh.”  
“You do not!” I started to crawl over him to get a look.  
“I swear. Right here.” He points to a lick of melted flesh high on his right thigh. “See, here’s the head and here’s the tail, and there’s a fin poking up…” As he pointed out the pieces, I could see the image pop out. A fish with a long tail, like the ones Capitol people keep as pets, swimming down his leg. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he jumped out of bed. At the door he spun around and pointed at me sternly. “Stay put.”  
I couldn’t help but laugh at his intensity as I pictured him running through the house naked. I hoped we remembered to pull the curtains last night, or residents of the Victors Village were in for a surprise. I heard his feet thump-thumping up the stairs. I will always know where this boy is, I laughed to myself. He was wearing a deranged sort of smile when he reappeared. In his hand was a black marker, and he pulled the cap off with his teeth, itching to start.  
“What are you doing with that?”  
“It’ll wash off,” he assured me, but his eyes were already gone to that far off place he goes when he’s inspired. He rolled me onto my back gently and ran both hands over my stomach like it was a fresh canvas. He laid down perpendicular to me, propped on his elbow, and after a moment or two of studying, he began to tease the pictures out of me. It started with a flower next to my navel and grew over the next hour to an entire garden sweeping across my belly, hiding fish and birds and insects. It was excruciating lying still, straining to see what he was doing, twitching and laughing when the pen swept across a spot that still had feeling or he blew on the ink to dry it. Once or twice my fidgeting frustrated him and he pushed two strong fingers against my breastbone until I laid down and stopped squirming. “I’m working here,” he sighed, a smile creeping along his lips.  
“I’m not the ideal canvas.”   
“You’re a wonderful canvas,” he placed a warm, spreading kiss at my hip. “We are definitely doing this again.” Aside from the ticklish spots and the struggle to keep still, it felt really good to let him draw on me. I was almost asleep when I heard the cap click back on the marker. “There,” he sighed, shaking out the cramp in his drawing hand. “Now you can look.”  
The tattooed women of the Capitol never looked this beautiful. The lines were thick in some places, delicate in others. They didn’t hide my scars, they enhanced them. I couldn’t see flesh melted by fire anymore, only plants and animals. What he saw when he looked at my scars.  
“Peeta,” I breathed, every second finding something new. “This is…you’re really talented.” He laughed lightly, and I felt stupid for saying something so obvious, until I saw the blush on his cheek and remembered how lousy he is at taking a compliment. “Draw the fish! I want to see if we see it the same way.” We did. A red fish with bulging eyes and a flowing tail that dragged up him. I grabbed the marker and pushed him back against the headboard, studying the long one across his chest that I hated. I gnawed at the cap, trying to piece out what I saw. I’m no artist, so instead of animals, I started picking out patterns, drawing straight lines and curves and little arches. Whenever he twitched, I flicked him playfully on the forehead. “I’m working here,” I mumbled. When I was happy with what I’d done I sat back and smiled. He took a long time examining it, and I felt self-conscious under his artist’s eye. They were doodles, really. Scribbles in comparison.   
“Is this what you see when you look at me?” he whispered at last. I shrugged shyly, having only recently discovered that I could be shy around him sometimes. “It’s beautiful,” he smiled. “Hold on. I’ve got an idea.” He was gone again, this time returning with a few wide sheets of cotton paper. “We’re gonna save them. Because I know you and I know me and we’re going to smudge these up pretty quick.” I laughed, happy that we had arrived at a place where sex was more often than not something fun and easy and comfortable and not so serious and awkward and daunting. The ink on his chest was still fairly wet, so we could pull a relief off of it with ease, but he had to trace over the fish and my stomach, carefully laying down the parchment then peeling it off to reveal the picture. When he was finished, he placed the papers carefully on the side table and leaned his forehead against mine.  
“You’re beautiful,” he sighed.  
“You’re beautiful,” I repeated. And then we made a mess. Big, black smears everywhere and brand new linen sheets ruined. I had a streaky ink spot running down my neck for days.  
He’s not pulling out the pictures now. He’s painting my scars exactly as they appear.  
“I’m getting tired,” I complain.  
“I’m pretty much done.” He chews at his lower lip, concentrating. “Come here for a second.” He turns me towards the light and runs a thumb over the long arm that stretches up my ribs on the left side. He keeps his hand there as his eyes dart back and forth from the canvas to my skin. “There.” He scratches his face and leaves a big burgundy stripe along the side of his nose. If you didn’t know what it was, you’d never guess, except that he painted my navel and the light dancing off my belly. It’s an abstract shape that meanders across the olive-colored background, shooting out in long tendrils. I had made him paint the little fish last week, surprised that I actually liked any of the scars I had been hesitant to touch a few months ago. This is something completely different. With no butterflies or fish of my own on the canvas, I’m taken with how beautiful I still find the image. It’s an ugly reminder of sacrifice and loss, but it could be so much more. We can be so much more. We don’t have to be defined by our scars, inside or out. I kiss his cheek, getting paint on the tip of my nose.  
“I’m going to put the inky sheets on the bed,” I whisper. His hand dives into his art box and fishes around until he comes out with a marker and a smile.


End file.
